* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

URRGH! Evil app WATCHES YOU WATCHING PORN, snaps your grimace

LucreLout

Re: A better headline...

P0rn purveyors pernicious program publishes punters private pen1s pumping pictures.

Are you avoiding tax, big tech firm? Not any more you won't, growl MEPs

LucreLout
Pirate

Re: Other ways for countries to make money

charging all of the migrants 1000eu for a ... passport

That already happens, its just the price that differs. Seriously, several EU states will hawk a passport for the right price, they just dress up the terms a small amount.

LucreLout

Re: figure out Bing

@Naughtyhorse

really?

'figure out'?

it's a textbox ffs

Yes, really which part of the word "users" is it you missed? :)

Google don't only provide search - theres a whole bundle of services many people and businesses make use of from search or maps to Google Docs or Google Drive. Yes, it'd take me all of 30 seconds to switch away from Google, but it'd take a lot longer than that for my 70+ year old parents.

Think of it like this - If the EU banned facebook, most over 40s wouldn't notice while most under 30's would have a fit. It is in every way a more trivial loss than Google would be, and yet the fallout from banning it would have politicians quaking in their illgotten second homes.

What won't happen, no matter what contortions the "special committee" achieve, is Google paying 18% on its UK revenue minus its real operating costs and allowances. If they don't realise that then they're more special ed than special ops. So the question then becomes a balancing act - how much do you pragmatically expect to extract in additional revenue vs how much pain will it be to stop them doing business.

LucreLout

Re: Those companies aren't doing anything that....

@Ac

That which is not strictly forbidden, is allowable. That which has already been given permission to do, cannot be taken back.

That used to be the case, but Gordon Brown changed that with regard to taxation. Whatever your political views, it is a fact.

Rules can be clarified years after the fact and the tax man can come back and double dip the corporate accounts. It's fundamentally dishonest.

LucreLout

Re: good luck with that

@Ac

if they're faced with losing a whole market they'll pay - it's simply the less costly option.

That depends. One of the things it depends on is Googles view of whether it needs the EU more than the EU needs it. Sure, techies can use any other search engine effectively enough, but I can well imagine lost productivity as the masses try to figure out Bing or Yahoo as opposed to what they know. To far too many people, Google is "The Internet".

Another thing it depends on is how else they can turn that profit into something that isn't profit and therefore not taxable, but which allows profitability to rise in less hostile environments.

Attention sysadmins! Here’s how to dodge bullets in a post-Ashley Madison world

LucreLout

@AC

It's pretty silly to leave a desktop on 24x7 without good reason as it will chew up power

My works PC runs 24x7x365. I never know when or if I'll need to dial in to rectify something or assist someone with something they really ought to know how to do. Security aren't allowed to turn on our PCs for us if we call them out of hours, so there's not a lot of other choices.

Sure, there's lots of alternatives that we could be doing but they all cost time & money, and are "strategic decisions" above my pay grade.

LucreLout

@Chris Miller

Firstly, hello to my sysadmins. I'm not doing anything neferious with the works gear, so feel free to check. However...

Chris - I have a question if you or others have time to answer it please?

You should also be aware that using SHTTP won't protect you from the systems administrators, who will (if they're competent) have installed a trusted certificate on your (company) system so that everything can be decrypted

How would that present itself to a user in the browser? I'm thinking it would show itself in the certification path? Or does it not appear at all?

If we take Amazon as an example, I see a verisign root cert, followed by a verisign class 3 cert, followed by amazon.co.uk I don't see my company certs anywhere.

Layabout, sun-blushed techies have pick of IT job market, says survey

LucreLout

Re: Just another bit of propaganda to pressure the Govt to issue more visas.

@The Mole

Sadly it is exactly as you describe, coupled with what another poster already said about the wage pyramid in large corporates.

My manager has a very difficult time grasping the concept that I could "skill up" to do his job in about five minutes, whereas he couldn't skill up to do mine in five years. I build products that make or save the company hundreds of millions of pounds, continuously teach myself new skills in my own time, and have 20 years experience; he rubber stamps my timesheet, sends templated reports to more senior management, and lies to me at appraisal time. And yet he seems to believe he should be paid more. It'd be funny were it not so tragic.

So Quantitative Easing in the eurozone is working, then?

LucreLout

@Any mouse Cow turd

I have yet to see an economics article complaining about the effect of low cost airlines or computer cost reductions or the "discount" supermarkets on living standards. Personally these effects have given me increased disposable income to spend elsewhere.

From what I can find quickly, the average wage of a stewardess was about 2000 USD per month in 1987 http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/airline%20labor%20earnings.pdf

Throwing on a bout of inflation brings us to about 4200 USD. Now stuffing that through an FX calculator gets us to 2751 GBP. The average today according to payscale is currently just north of 1200 GBP.

Things then, may not have been great for the European trolley dolly. The increased disposable income you enjoy has come from the wage premium once demanded by air crew. Discount supermarkets similarly pass along to you what was once the income of the farmer. You sir, are then the fat cat of which you speak.

LucreLout

Re: When do we get to win?

@Will 28.

I understand the whole hedonic adjustment thing

Then you should understand why you've already won. I know, I know, it doesn't always feel like that, but look at this objectively for a sec.

Today you can buy a faster car than an 80s rich mans Ferrari (308) for around one years pre-tax minimum wage.

Today you can get pretty well any fruit or veg at any time of year. Not so much in the 70s, regardless of wealth, and not at all prior to then.

You could be in New York tonight, in time to go out for a drink for a few hundred quid. Not something available to the richest of rich people a hundred years ago.

I suppose I'm more pointing towards inequality, but more specifically how the current economic policies appear to be motivated by keeping wages down

Lets split these into two points, because they are very different things.

Equality of outcome you can't ever have. Some people are just smarter, better with money, luckier, or harder working than others. Equality of opportunity you'll never get due to human nature.

An example, if I may. My boss earns more than I, at least 25% more in fact. He's prioritising spending money on a bigger house, better holidays, and an unending procession of newer and flashier cars. I'm prioritising my childrens education. His view is that having had girls "They'll just get married and give up work so what's the point?" - not a view I subscribe to myself. Assuming education is a beneficial differentiator, he's moved the next generation of his own family from what should have been a position of advantage over mine to one that isn't.

And so to wages. Wage increases above the rate of inflation must feed back into the rate of inflation: more money chasing the same goods/services. New spending opportunities mitigate that to an extent, but lead to greater inequality - Kids can buy a lot more music today than ever before and its a much slicker process, leading to greater concentrations of wealth amongst the successful - See Taylor Swift for evidence of this.

Average wage rises can at best track average economic growth, but within that there will be a great deal of distortions due to supply and demand.

LucreLout

Re: Blind spots...

@ScissorHands

but an intervention on keynesian principles from the beginning of the Great Recession would have allowed a faster recovery

Unfortunately, a Keynsian intervention would have to have happened in 1999, which was the year Gordon Brown let rip the debt expansion and profligate state spending wholly unneccessary in the economic boom we were beginning.

Keynes requires, yes you read that right, requires, that the state spend less than it takes in taxes during the up phase of the boom such that it may spend more than it takes in taxes during the down slope. The bit the lefties always, always get wrong is the saving during the upswing part.

ETA: @Johnnydub99 - Having read a bit further I see you've articulated the exact same sentiments as I, only you've done so in a far more eloquent manner. Have an upvote Sir.

LucreLout

Re: QE magically avoids inflation ...

@Scrubber

While the economy is still very fragile shares reached record highs.

It's not just shares. Supercar prices are higher than a sniffer dog searching the Motley Crue tour bus.

Unwinding QE will be very difficult. I have a half suspicion that what will actually happen is that the bonds will be held to maturity rather than sold back to market, and that some or all of the money will leak out into the Treasury a few decades from now.

LucreLout

@P.Lee

As one who writes software purely to juggle money, I can understand your sentiment. However, there are people within our wider field that are working on cutting edge image enhancement for medical scanners, for example, who really are making the world a better place. Widespread drone automation could be used in a weaponised manner, but it could equally be used for search and rescue operations over difficult terrain.

IT is just a toolset. How it gets used depends in part upon the ethics and motivations of those in the industry, but moreso on the ethics and motivations of those to whom we report - the business, in that sense, who control the agenda.

LucreLout

@Harmony

I'm really starting to wonder what strings Worstall had to pull in order to get his polemics regularly featured on a tech news site.

I'll take Worstalls work over Pottys polemics any day of the week. I can't quite understand how someone with no enterprise level experience, for whom the industry beings and ends in mom & pop small shops, is regualrly given bandwidth to write articles with all the depth and critical thinking I'd expect of a typical "Page 3 Stunna".

Thankfully, we all like different things. Some people prefer Tim, others Trevor. El Reg sells advertising space in both their works, but Worstalls regularly produce more ad revenue (based unscientifically on the number of comments per article). That, I suspect, is the crux of the matter.

Fiat Chrysler recalls THOUSANDS more cars to swerve hack-my-brakes roadkill

LucreLout

I don't get it....

.... how does having a connected vehicle make a driver better at observation, anticipation, and correct & timely reaction? It doesn't, so this adds nothing to road safety.

How does it update vehicle firmware remotely, without the owner needing to do anything other than give the ok? Oh, it doesn't, so it's not actually making either the garage or the owners lives more convenient.

So, erm, what is it all supposed to be doing?

NHS to go paperless by 2020. No, really, it will, says gros fromage

LucreLout

Re: Clarification or Correction, please

@Intractable Potsherd

based on population, the south east of England is the equivalent of a nation. It certainly has far more than its fair share of influence.

I quite agree.

Let's have a referendum to divorce the rest of the UK from that corner

Loathe though I am to admit it, the rest of the UK being independent is no more fiscally achievable at the current time than an iScotland would be.

I suspect common cause will easily be found, especially with the Welsh involved

The last thing the Welsh want is independence. Even with a tonne of whatever the SNP use as rolling baccy, they couldn't make their numbers add up for five minutes. Credit to the Welsh, there's no pretence to the contrary.

Far more fruitful than well-meaning folks like you playing Westminster's game by getting upset that some people aren't as happy with the blissful Union as you are.

You misunderstand. Aside for the almost instant and unending poverty and hardship it'd cause the Scots, I'd quite like to see them floated off on their own, and not just because I'd quite like a cheap as chips holiday flat in Edinburgh. The reality is we'd end up propping them up financially, as having a basket case economy on your border makes national security difficult.

Independence will last a few years at most. Any second act of Union would rightly see Scotland rejoin as a county of England, which is really what it should always have been recognised as.

LucreLout

Re: Clarification or Correction, please

@AC

Labour may beg you to stay, for without Scotland there can be no Labour governments, however they do not speak for England.

The Conservatives played a master stroke - Allowed the Tartan Mafia to put themselves into a position where EVEL becomes an absolute must with the electorate to fix the problem of two classes of MP we currently endure. In so doing, they hobble the worst excesses of any future Labour governments.

Any goodwill the English had towards Scotland vanished in the face of their racist, spiteful, and illogical rhetoric. They have few friends here now, even in the Northern cities, such as my home town, where once there had been nought but warmth for our neighbours over the wall.

Scotland couldn't afford independence back then, and you sure as shit can't afford it now. The central problem is that Scotland is the size of a large city by population, at best it may be considered a county, but it has never really been a proper country in the international sense. You need to adjust your expectations - Scotland has no right to a greater sway over England than does Birmingham.

LucreLout

Re: Clarification or Correction, please

Begging you to stay?? Don't be so silly pal - a vote in England would have seen you shown the door, and that was then. After all the Little Scotlander antics during the vote, and the tartan tails increasingly desperate attempts to wag the English dog, you must realise most of England doesn't actually want you in the Union?

LucreLout

Re: £1m per trust for storing paper

@AMBxx

Sounds like a bargain compared to what they'll be charged for storing it all digitally.

Indeed, and backing this is the crux of the problem - they'll try to keep everything.

What they should be doing is streamlining their data collection and its processing, looking to remove duplication of data & effort, with ALL of the associated cut backs to management and administration that implies.

The goal must be to digitise only what they need rather than what they have. And they should seek to do this not with scanned images of paper forms, but by eliminating the paper records in the first place.

West's only rare earth mine closes. Yet Chinese monopoly fears are baseless

LucreLout
Pint

Re: Abnormal for Norfolk

@Graham

Norfolk and Suffolk are East Anglia. We certainly don't think of ourselves as South East.

South of Yorkshire is "The South". South of Hertfordshire is "The Deep South". South of the Thames is "France". There ends the geography lesson :)

So, was it really the Commies that caused the early 20th Century inequality collapse?

LucreLout

Re: @LucreLout We obviously need to globalise the unions then too

@Fraggle

There is a part of me that will always be working class and idealistic.

Me too. Thankfully that part is no longer my income :)

I also think that there are way too many useless degrees offering false hope and debt.

Completely agree with that. I really don't see why we can't setup a proper modern apprenticeship system (that is a failing of parties of all colours). I'd also like to see each university school publish the average salary of its graduates in the first 5 years after graduation, isolating any earnings premium or none. I'm sure the history of art is a fine degree, but studying it for financial gain, as opposed to any intellectual enjoyment, my not be the wisest course of action.

But don't demonise the youths, you may not understand them but they aren't all bad.

I don't really believe its their fault.... society lies to them all the way through school, and media & branding sell them a vision of a lifestyle they'll never have. Just tell them the truth -> Of course you can fail. Your peers may be your friends, but they will also be your competition. Some of you will win, some will lose, most will be the middle of the curve.

Despite my darker, more logical thinking I'll probably always come down on the side of equality and inclusion for all.

Equality of what though? Of outcome? That is every bit as wrong as it is unattainable. Of opportunity? Well, yes, I'd go with that as an ideal, but its not something you'll ever see happen. As a parent I'll do everything I can to give my kids the best start, and advantage, in life that I can. Most parents do the same.... hard to legislate against that.

Choose your future society: Robocop or Star Trek

RoboCop was way cooler. All StarTrek really did was elevate mankind into competing and fighting with aliens instead of each other. They two visions aren't so different as they first seem. Unfortunately.

LucreLout

Re: @LucreLout We obviously need to globalise the unions then too

@Fraggle

...the BMA? The Institute of Directors? The CBI?

I'm not sure how many professionals view the BMA and their members as a proper profession anymore. Professionals don't strike, which rather diminshes the standing of much of the BMA in my eyes. I'm equally unsure that the IoD or the CBI canbe had as paragons of collective bargaining, certainly not on behalf of the staff they employ.

Assuming that future roles are increasingly professional and that bulk roles for workers will disappear over time with increasing automation, where does that leave those who don't fit the new roles? Are we to have an ever expanding underclass doomed to a life on ever decreasing benefits?

Ultimately, we'll have to restrict population growth to ensure that we limit how many people fall into such category. That can be done by a variety of means such as taxing the production of children rather than incentivising it with welfare. That sounds awful to say, but being realistic we can't have an unending increase in the supply of economically useless people unless the economically active can outproduce them adfinitum, which we can't.

After that we need to revist the purpose of education and the means by which it is provided. For all the grade inflation of the past 25+ years, teenagers certainly aren't any smarter than my generation: a fact which can be evidenced by visting any high street after dark.

Collective bargaining will make no difference to the pace and scale of automation, other than perhaps to speed it up. It is not the answer to this problem. Afterall, it cannot overcome the disincentive to effort nor mitigate the freerider problem.

LucreLout
Joke

Re: A bit simplistic

@scrubber

And yet the Ferengi use Latinum.

And the Federation use Credits.

And the Klingons use Darsek

To paraphrase some religious text or other:

And ForEx trading spivs will ever be with you.

LucreLout

Re: Go loons!

They are both far too far to the Left to appeal to the Center.

They are, but that is not a good thing. An effective government requires an effective opposition, and let us be honest about this, Labour are not an effective opposition now, and they will not become effective by lurching to the left.

In order to keep the government on a well thought through course, Labour will have to retreat from the politics of the playground / student common room. It may be funny laughing at Corbynomics, but 4+ term governments rarely achieve their best, due to being hamstrung by their past.

LucreLout

Re: We obviously need to globalise the unions then too

@Fraggle

the global labour movement

There is no labour movement, global or otherwise. Unions have never really represented the working man, they don't really representt heir members interests either - they predominantly represent the unions interest, for they are businesses in competition with each other for dues, much as any other industry.

Why else would Red Robbo have destroyed car manufacturing? Scargill the mines? The destruction of their members livelihoods was a gamble they took to exert more power and influence such that they could garner larger fees, or dues as their members know it.

Is it really in the tube drivers interest to continue earning twice the salary required to replace them in the role with identical skills? Does that not simply speed the process of automating their jobs? The RMT will be just fine - blow up one employer and others worry they're next. Great for the union, less great for their members in the busted business.

There never was a global labour movement, and it is unlikley to ever come about now. Professionals don't join unions, by and large, and much of the future roles to come will be professional.

LucreLout

Re: I'm glad someone else brought up energy...

@unitron

I've long felt that the relatively low price up until near the end of '73 and the removal of that advantage afterwards played a pretty big part in post WWII economics.

It certainly likely to have contributed. We should have some better data in the next 10 years too, as the current oil price crash begins to feed through to the economic output.

LucreLout

Re: A bit simplistic

@Crumble

The best I can come up with is, take all the money, give it to the people, they use it to buy the output of the machines. Then you have to take all the money off the owner of the machines and give it back to the people to keep the cycle going.

In that scenario, who generates the wealth to invest in the machines initially, and why would they do so? If there is no economic incentive to do anything then people will do nothing - pop into any Wetherspoons about now and watch the tax payer funded welfare system at work. My local one has a sign restricting those with children to two drinks maximum, which is a very sad state of affairs.

The transition from where we are to the "Star Trek" universe you mention, assuming it comes, will be more painful than any in human history. Until the robots and the AI are truly commoditised, someone will own their output, and that person will no longer seek to pay for your output. Worse still, they will no longer seek to pay for mine!

LucreLout

Re: A bit simplistic

@Richard12

The socialist ones are possibly the worst, as they assume (almost) everyone is happy to be a "worker bee".

The capitalist ones are possibly the worst, as they assume (almost) everyone cares the most about accumulation of wealth.

The most important differentiator in what you have said is that socialism pretty much forces everyone to be a worker bee and to accept less. The less comes from the fact that a hard working person will slack off if all he is to earn is the rate of the slacker, thus everyone produces less on average.

Capitalism does not demand that anyone give a shit about accumulated wealth, but allows those that do to accumulate it. Everyones a winner, in that sense.

LucreLout

Re: Post-war 90/10 story

Also a fertile time for individual careers, as "dead mens shoes" opportunities helped with corporate (and other institutional) career ladders.

Quite. Willets book, The Pinch, also makes an interesting point about generational demographics and the wage pyramid. Essentially, due to the boomers being a large generation and Gen X being a small one, the wage pyramid should have inverted such that the young would have earned better pay than their parents due to competition for their time, similar to the post war dead shoe gig.

Mass immigration and globalisation were brought about as a means to prevent that inversion, and continue to ensure that while national GDP rises ever higher, GDP per capita does not. That is either a good or bad thing depending on what you earn/own/and any emotive or philosophical preferences you may hold.

LucreLout

@Tim Worstall

Maybe we should deliberately lower inequality with very high tax rates and all the rest in order to get us some of that lovely growth of the 1950s and '60s?

I still don't understand the socialist obsession with other peoples money. We could more readily equalise beauty by hitting the pretty with a brick, or applied intelligence by taxing education, or health by a centrally planned diet and exercise regime, and even lifespan could be equalised by euthanisia a-la Logans Run.

I earn my income by legal means, paying all taxes which are due under the system. That I don't spend every penny I earn is more due to budgeting than it is a high income. Just how much of what I earn do socialists feel entitled to, and why? Why do they think I would continue to make the sacrifices I do now, in return for the higher comp, if I'm to see it squandered on other peoples pipe dreams?

Short of a global implementation, which will never happen, I don't see how this could be expected to work without emmigration controls - the best & brightest would simply leave, again. The world is a lot smaller now than it was during the brain drain of the 1970s, and those with the greatest skills and/or wealth are the most mobile.

So, maybe there is something to this strong unions, government management of the economy

The 70s called for a chat. They want their power cuts, lack of service, zero choice, and appaling politically motivated strikes back.

It so happens that the turning point in the 1980s coincides with (1) acceleration of skill-biased technological progress, (2) increased globalisation and entry of Chinese workers into the global labour market, (3) pro-rich policy changes (lower taxes), (4) decline of the trade unions, and (5) end of Communism as an ideology.

Seems to me that the 80s was around the time that education as a route from poverty really got going. Certainly by the late 80s my family had realised this may be the best route for us, and I became the first generation of our clan to graduate university.

Despite Labours paucity of thought concerning pushing 50% of kids into uni [1], it remains true that those graduating a STEM subject will enjoy better than average earnings. It is also around the time the property market began to motor, which is one of the core drivers of wealth differential, particularly as the generation with the greatest property gains is also the generation that had the largest pensions, leaving more of that wealth to be inherited tax free [2].

Those who educate themselves to an above average level, and who's families play the long game regarding property ownership and passing wealth down the generations, will drive "inequality" ever higher. If educating yourself, working hard, investing in your families future, and leaving something to the kids is a bad thing then someone will have to explain that to me, because I don't see it.

[1] Yes, graduates tend to earn more than others but that doesn't mean making everyone a grad will increase everyones income any more than the rampant GCSE grade inflation that continues unabated.

[2] There is no capital gains tax on a PPR, and since most houses fall well below the IHT threshold, there are no gains there. Each generation rolls the inheritance into an ever better PPR until they get to the IHT threshold. Thereafter grannies pad gets left to the next generation below, and so it goes. Eventually you start needing to gift assets and taking proper advice, but by that time your family will have a few million in assets.

The future of IT is – to deliver automation. Discuss

LucreLout

Re: Who will own the A.I. ?

When the super-rich and corporations own all the A.I. and robots (already), and replace almost all jobs (more and more), what will you do?

Well, I'll probably be dead by then and so will you.

Any grandchildren I'm fortunate enough to have will make their own decisions as no matter how well I try to plan my families transition into that brave new world, anything I think of today will be obsolete before then.

If you're really worried about it, buy some land and some Google shares. I don't own Google shares, but I figure if they can't crack AI themselves then they'll probably buy out whomever does. Any gravitation of wealth as you describe should then accrue in part to you, solving the problem as you experience it.

Ex top judge admits he's incapable of reading email, doesn't own a PC

LucreLout

I used to work with a guy in our IT department who didn't own a computer, and saw no purpose in owning one.

My kit may not be state of the art... ok, my kit is old and on its last legs, but, it still works. (You've no idea how many words I swapped around before settling on kit as a word that can't be misconstrued as penis).

Anyway, what I'm wondering is how someone with no equipment manages the continous professional development that accompanies all aspects of IT as a career? Almost everyone I know that struggles for work has let their skills degrade or date, with the converse being similarly true.

LucreLout

Re: Don't know whether I sought applaud or shake my head

@petur

If his position does not require him to be able to read/write e-mail, then why not.

It's indicative of the judge being out of touch with the modern world circa all of this millenium. If he cannot comprehend even the most basic functions of a computer, he cannot comprehend any part anything digital may play in matters he oversees. What other areas of life does he remain deliberately ignorant of or incapable of understanding?

I'm not suggesting this should require him to step down, only that it is a warning flag. The rest of your post I agreee with.

Met Police to slash hundreds of IT jobs, hands £216m outsourcing gig to Steria

LucreLout

Re: This won't be popular...

Trying to exploit low-income areas to keep wages low has usually the disadvantage you won't be able to hire skilled people who know they can earn much more elsewhere, especially since those low-income areas offer often lower quality services also. It works for low-skill industries, never for hi-tech ones.

Allocating quality jobs to where they can be done cost effectively is not exploitation, it is efficiency.

There are no skills required to design, build, maintain, and run complex software systems that you cannot find available in the North East. I cannot speak for Wales as I've never lived there, but would assume the Welsh just as capable. That backoffice public sector work can only be done in the south east of England is a self evident fallacy.

There's a great many reasons skilled people don't gravitate to London, though obviously some do (me, for instance).

LucreLout

Re: IDS

Bung in 'computers as per the movies, they will analyise all data, instantly, and promptly pinpoint the perps.

Criminals are generally speaking not very bright. Fingerprinting has been known about for more than 100 years (Harry Jackson was the last man with an excuse), and yet they frequently forego the use of gloves, despite the sure & certain knowledge that their fingerprints are already on file the last time they were nicked.

LucreLout

Re: This won't be popular...

@DanX

Diversity gives some resistance to centralised mistakes

Only as much as it gives to centralised success.

I expect if there was a centralised super IT team for all government departments it wouldn't save much, as the people with more responsibility would want more cash, and would be more irreplaceable.

Average IT wage in London must be well north of £50k. It'll be half of that for the same skills and experience in Carlisle or Gateshead.

I think consolidating this stuff and council stuff is a bad idea. Getting them to work smart and work together though - that seems like a brilliant plan.

What is the point of having 52 CTOs where 1 will do? And that's just the London councils. Its just duplication of effort and mistakes - 1 team will learn from its mistakes, 52 teams will each learn only from their mistakes. Its one reason why "Lessons will be learned" is such an oft used and equally hollow public sector pronouncement.

LucreLout

This won't be popular...

...but, shifting back office public sector roles from London and the south east, where wages are high, to locations like the North East or Wales where they are not makes a lot of sense. That shouldn't have to mean outsourcing though, just shared resources.

Why, for instance, do we need so many police forces, with very little internal mobility, when we could merge them and they could share back office functions?

Why do we allow every tin pot council to have its own bespoke processes and systems when they all do essentially the same thing? It would make more sense to move their back office functions to locations where the tax payer can get the most bang for their buck.

BACS Bank Holiday BALLS UP borks 275,000 payments

LucreLout

Re: The bank could close for a month and I'd be OK.

The bank could close for a month and I'd be OK.

I'd be screwed in short order.... I have very little cash laying about and some sizeable liabilities to cover (mortgage and train to work for instance).

It's not that I'm fiscally profligate, but I'd need at least a few grand in cash to go for a month, and I'm not convinced having that much money in the house is a good idea.

LucreLout
Joke

Bankers Bacs Borks Businesses Bankholiday Break. Bunfight Begins.

Google robo-car suffers brain freeze after seeing hipster cyclist

LucreLout

Re: @LucreLout - This situation would happen anyway

@Graham

However where you say "Cyclists are responsible for their own safety" that doesn't mean that other road users shouldn't take equal care.

Equal care as they do with other traffic? No, other road users should take extra care around bikers and cyclists. Collisions with cycles or bikes won't just be a call to the insurance and a trip to the body shop.

Equal care as the cyclist? No, again, because the cyclist must be primarily responsible for their own safety. How could they not be?

SMIDSY is a consequence of the driver not looking and the rider not allowing them space & time to make a mistake. That said, I appreciate that there's only so much you can do - I try to leave the other guy room, but I've still had panel damage. I'd quite like to see fault or partial fault accidents penalised in some way - help the special ones stay focussed on the task at hand.

LucreLout

Most computers are already familiar with mime types.

LucreLout

Re: This situation would happen anyway

@Graham

Let us not forget:-

Rule 59 that says you should wear a helmet and high vis.

Rule 64 that says you MUST NOT cycle on the pavement.

Rule 66 that says you should cycle in single file around bends or on busy roads.

Rule 68 that says you MUST NOT ride in a careless, inconsiderate or dangerous manner.

Rule 69 that says you MUST OBEY all traffic signs and signals.

Rule 71 that says you MUST NOT jump red lights.

Rule 72 that says you MUST NOT pass on the inside of an indicating vehicle.

Cyclists are responsible for their own safety, but everyone should leave enough space & time for the other road user to make a mistake - shouting rules at each other is not the best way to achieve that, it has to be cooperative and that requires compromise from each of us.

Note: I capitalised the MUST NOT bits not to shout, but because highway code convention differentiates SHOULD NOT to mean advice and MUST NOT to mean backed by law.

Fugitive UK hacker turned ISIS recruiter killed in Syria

LucreLout

Re: Glorifying killing

Quite ironic and a little depressing that this results in his own death being glorified and celebrated by some of the posters on here.

I celebrate it unashamedly. ISIS can suck my balls. That is all.

ETA: There's a few posts further down that conflate Islam & ISIS. I don't. I have a few (admittedly very few) muslim friends and they simply don't recognise that interpretation of their religion.

Aviva phone hacker jailed for 18 months over revenge attack

LucreLout
FAIL

Re: 18 months??

@Gordon10

I've been the victim of several serious assaults spanning the course of 30 years. Despite convictions in each instance, nobody has ever done a day in jail. Not one single day. I have several plates in my face & skull which will never be removed, and non-trivial levels of nerve damage.

Finding another job is easy. Trivial in fact. Only those without marketable skills need worry, and there's nothing to be done for them anyway. You'll just have to take my word for it that you'd rather be hacked and lose a contract than beaten unconscious, beaten some more, and then have your head stamped on by a gang of thugs.

It is a fact, which you can verify by visiting most mags courts and any crown court, that a first offence of section 20 GBH with an admission of guilt will not result in a custodial tariff. Not even a few nights.

If we've not got the space to jail violent offenders then we have not go the space to jail a moron who cost his employer just £80k. My medical bills alone cost the NHS more than that last time I was mugged, to say nothing of the police and prosecution costs.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/wounding_or_inflicting_grievous_bodily_harm/

Starting point 3 years, 1/3rd off for guilty plea, 1/3rd off for mitigation (remorse, first offence etc), and the remaining 12 months get suspended for 2 years by default. You have your evidence sir.

LucreLout

18 months??

Where's the violence? Hacking former employers is easy, unprofessional, and stupid. There's no justification for it. But an 18 month tariff for this is insane compared to what is handed down for far more serious offences.

Devs are SHEEP. Which is good when the leader writes secure code

LucreLout

Re: ROFL

@Vic

Tools are a small piece of the problem; you can produce good code with next to no tools, and you can produce utter shite with the best tools in the business.

I agree with your reply to my post. I may have used the wrong word when I said "tools" though... I was thinking more along the line of one of the hundreds of 5 minute languages or js frameworks that are popping up just now, or one of the far too many minor NoSQL toys. The stuff that won't be around next year, never mind next decade.

There's nothing wrong with "minority" languages or NoSQL - The excellent RabbitMQ is produced in Erlang, which is great at what it does and not great at stuff it wasn't designed for.... They just need to be used appropriately and with the concept of needing 10 years of support and enchancement after go-live.

LucreLout

ROFL

Programmers with security chops are seen as more productive and influential workers who other coders strive to emulate, according to security researchers from North Carolina State University and Microsoft Research.

The problem here is the same issue that inflicts itself upon almost the entire IT industry: Ego.

I have never yet met a cowboy developer who could recognise that they were A) a coyboy, and B) a problem. I have, however, worked with a lot of mid-range devs who drank their own Kool-aid and thought they were the best developer in the team/company/country.

After 20 years professional experience, constant skills refresh (Thanks PluralSight & Channel9), some professional certs, and a couple of degrees, I think I'm a reasonable developer. I'm certainly not the best developer I've ever worked with, not even in my personal top 5. I get very tired of fixing crap rolled out by devs with five minutes experience, using tools with a shelf life of an egg sandwich, just because they read about it on someones bogcast the night before and figured it might be fun to try.

Secure software may never come about, no matter how much effort we make. It absolutely will not happen though, without an industry regulator to enforce standards of skills and ongoing development of those allowed to work in the industry - something akin to the BMA.

The Onion Router is being cut up and making security pros cry

LucreLout

It depends...

.... on what you're using TOR for I guess.

If you're moving serious quantities of illegal products then , yeah, you may have a problem. If you're buying small personal use levels of products to get yourself f***ed up, well, the cost of going after you is probably higher than the perceived value of a prosecution.

If you're using TOR to hack major companies, you've possibly got an issue. If you're tyring to SQL inject some mon & pop dry cleaners half a world away, for non-destructive research purposes, you're probably too small fry to worry about.

If you're using TOR to avoid advertising, censorship in a benign jurisdiction etc then you're probably just peachy.

Should all Europeans be able to watch Estonian football? Consultation launched

LucreLout
Joke

Re: @Ledswinger

@Ledswinger

commercial businesses. If you don't like it, vote for Corbyn, he'll put an end to this sort of thing.

I fixed your punctuation below:

Commercial businesses: If you don't like it, vote for Corbyn, he'll put an end to this sort of thing.

Big trouble in big China: Crashing economy in Middle Kingdom body slams US tech stocks

LucreLout

Re: Well.. there goes the 401k...

@Graham

Generally agree with that, however there is a third reason.

It may be you have more than enough put away to get by on the dividends and state pension or other income, in which case leaving the money invested in stocks (part or all) can produce decent long term gains while leaving a pot to pass to decendants.

The FTSE yields about 3.5%ish, so a £1M pot would knock out up to about £35k, which is possibly more than the person requires - especially if their spouse also has pension provision. Staying in stocks may make sense (you pays your money you takes your choice).